Allied POWs were spread out all over Japan, small camps of
only 500-1000 men. Outside the camps, the Japanese population
was eating miserably and the POWs were hardly eating at all. The
POWs knew they had to slow down on their work details or they
would never see the States again. By the end of 1944, the
emperor of Japan knew that the war was lost but he encouraged
his commanders for one final victory so that he may dictate the
terms of peace. The emperor would never agree to unconditionally
surrender, a decision that cost Japan millions of lives.

The Allied push to recapture strategic islands in the Pacific
put Allied bombers within reach of Tokyo. POWs were beginning to
hear and experience the bombings from the new B-29 Superfortress.
These massive planes were delivering a payload of 4-5 tons, with
air raids lasting several hours. The early months of 1945 began
with a different method of aerial attack, incendiary bombing.

Modern Japanese cities were constructed mainly of wood and
Japanese society would soon be burned to the
ground. Along side any industrial district is heavily populated
civilian areas. The industrial center of Tokyo had more than one
million people living and working in a twelve mile area.

The night of March 9th of '45 saw the biggest air raid in
history to that date, 279 B-29s turned Tokyo into a solar flare.
Temperatures as high as 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit turned
buildings into blast furnaces, cars simply melted and civilians
disappeared. This single bombing raid burned sixteen square
miles of Tokyo, 80,000-100,000 Japanese died, 40,000 Japanese
burned and a million left homeless.

Downed aircrews who became POWs received the worst possible
treatment. As early as 1942, the Japanese command classified
them as war criminals. Any pilot or crew member captured were
likely to be tortured or killed as soon as their parachute
folded on the ground. In Singapore, four flyers were paraded
through the streets naked and then had their heads chopped off
in public. At Hankow in China, airmen were tortured and burned
alive. At Kendebo, after a speech by a major general, a
decapitated fighter pilot was cut up, fried, and eaten by 150
Japanese officers. Eight captured B-29 crewmen were turned over
to the medical professors at Kyushu Imperial University. The
professors cut them up alive, stopping the blood flow in an
artery near the heart to see how long death took.

The fire bombing continued and by the end of June, 13 million
Japanese were homeless. The B-29s were dropping bombs at the
rate of 40,000 tons a month and all major industrial cities were
left in ashes. A naval blockade completely surrounded Japan and
on July 25th, the Potsdam Declaration had warned the Japanese
that if they did not surrender unconditionally, their country
would face 'prompt and utter destruction.' Japan was defeated
but the devastation continued.

Allied commanders knew that an invasion into Japan would be
one of the costly events in the history of warfare. When the
tiny island of Corregidor was recaptured, five thousand Japanese
defended for eleven days to the death and only twenty were taken
prisoner. The battle for Iwo Jima captured 200 prisoners out of
21,000 Japanese soldiers. The capture of the island had cost
nearly 25,000 American casualties. On Okinawa, the carnage
lasted for two and a half months. The total number of Japanese
killed, 110,000 - Americans wounded, 37,000 - Americans killed,
12,500. Even more disturbing was the fact that Okinawans were
coerced into killing their own family members. They were told by
the Japanese command to expect rape and murder after the
American occupation. 95,000 Okinawans were killed before the
surrender of the island. The Japanese homeland was told to
expect the same thing, they were told that the American forces
were going to rape your daughters, kill your grandfathers and
completely destroy all of Japan. The emperor expected all of
Japan to resist to the death.

The Japanese command had a policy as of late 1944 that
stated, 'prevent prisoners of war from falling into enemy's
hands.' In the southern islands, Palawan was becoming very close
to liberation. The Japanese gathered the remaining 150 prisoners
into an air raid shelter, poured gasoline all around and lit the
shelter and men on fire. As men scrambled out engulfed in
flames, machine guns were waiting on them. Miraculously, ten of
the men escaped. The men in the camp at Davao were not killed,
just left for dead. On Formosa, an logged entry in the Japanese
Headquarters journal recorded the policy. 'Whether they are
destroyed individually or in groups, or however it is done, with
mass bombing, poisonous smoke, poisons, drowning, decapitation,
or what, dispose of the prisoners as the situation dictates. In
any case it is the aim not to allow the escape of a single one,
to annihilate them all, and not to leave any traces.'

At Sandakan, two thousand to three thousand Australian and
British POWs were in the last stages of disease and starvation.
In January 1945, the Japanese began a 175 mile death march to
Ranau. Groups of fifty men were moved out in anticipation of an
Allied invasion. About a month into the POW march, Australian
forces were planning a rescue operation that would land only
thirty miles from the camp. The supreme commander Douglas
MacArthur refused to release any DC-3 airplanes to aid in the
operation. This rescue operation in March would have liberated
approximately one thousand POWs but instead the death march
continued until August 1945. Only six prisoners survived the
Sandakan-Ranau death march while almost 2,400 POWs were killed
in the process.

One successful liberation by Allied forces took place at
Cabanatuan. On January 30, 1945, the 6th Ranger Battalion along
with twelve Alamo scouts went thirty miles behind Japanese lines
and rescued all of the remaining 500 POWs. The Rangers wiped out
all of the Japanese forces but lost two of their own in the
rescue operation.

Then in early February, Bilibid Prison was liberated by an
advance patrol of the Army's 37th Infantry. The Japanese had
left only hours before leaving the prison unguarded and quickly
the relief of being liberated began to overwhelm the four
hundred POWs as well as a couple hundred civilian prisoners. In
this group of liberated prisons was the mascot of the 4th
Marines, Soochow. That small mongrel dog from Shanghai made it
through the shelling of Corregidor, the disease and starvation
of prison camp and now was free with his fellow China Marines.

The atomic age began on August 6th, 1944 when a single B-29
dropped "Little Boy" on the city of Hiroshima. The
city was leveled in seconds and one hundred thousand Japanese
were dead. One factor that favored Hiroshima as the target was
the fact that Allied intelligence said there were no POWs in the
city. However, twenty or so downed airmen were being held close
to the hypocenter of the blast. The ones who did not die in the
blast were killed in the streets, two beaten to death and
another tied to a stake and stoned to death.

President Harry Truman gave notice to Japan stating they must
give up or 'face a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which
has never been seen on this earth.' The emperor chose to subject
his people to more devastation. On August 9th, Nagasaki was hit
with 'Fat Man', a plutonium bomb that killed another 40,000
Japanese. Thousands and thousands more would die later from
diseases that ravaged their bodies.

On August 15th, Japan's national radio announced a broadcast
of great importance and listeners were told to stand. After the
national anthem was played, a strange voice began to speak about
the complete destruction of the Japanese Empire. The voice said
that Japan had surrendered unconditionally to the Allied forces.
The voice they were listening to was the 'Son of Heaven', the
emperor himself. Never in the history of Japan had the commoner
heard the voice of the emperor, and on this occasion he spoke
about Japan's complete defeat and the end of World War II.

The end of the war did not mean immediate liberation for all
POWs. Several downed airmen and other POWs were killed the very
afternoon after the emperor's radio broadcast. In Manchuria, the
infamous Unit 731 laboratory machine-gunned the remaining 600
Chinese and Manchurian laborers and destroyed all human
experimental subjects. Before the medical staff of two thousand
deserted their laboratories, they released thousands of infected
rats.

For most of the POWs, liberation did not come in a formal
announcement from the camp commander. Instead, work details were
cancelled and the guards gave excuses explaining why there would
be no more work details. The POWs knew the war was over when
American fighter planes and bombers began appearing overhead,
thousands of seabags and 55-gallon drums full of food, clothes,
and cigarettes were parachuted into the camps. In just seconds,
the POWs finally had a full stomach after 3 1/2 years of
starvation. However, the POWs were still being held by the
Japanese and a nervous tension began to settle in with the
prisoners. One of the most painful feelings the POWs had to
endure the length of the war was never knowing what the Japanese
were going to do next. Based on what they experienced with the
Japanese, it would not have surprised any of the prisoners if
the guards started to massacre each and every one of them.

For many of the POWs, they were told that they were going to
be moved to another camp, they boarded trains and trucks and
were driven to American forces. Now, finally the POWs knew they
had survived and were going home.

"We had hope. Now that was the thing. If you gave up
hope, then you'd die because there's nothing else to live for
then. But every day was the end of the war, see, and you'd go
day by day. At first you'd say, well, we surrendered in May
and by Christmas the Americans are going to be here and get us
out. Of course they never made it so then it would be the 4th
of July and then it would be Christmas again. So it just kept
you going all the time. . . . Oh, gosh the feeling that you
had, boy, was just like somebody had 10,000 pounds on your
shoulder and all of a sudden it was lifted. You were just
elated that you were free and, people just don't understand
that if you don't have your freedom, what it really feels
like. It's just -- it's just bad. That's all it is. It just
holds you down and everything else. And boy, from then lifting
that weight and knew that the war was over with and that we
were free and that we were going -- that we were going to go
home and boy, you were just -- your smile was just moving your
ears away. You know, in other words you're smiling so wide,
you know, that it was really something though."
- Pete George

One year and nine months after the surrender of Corregidor,
the 4th Marines were reactivated on Guadalcanal. Forming the
nucleus of the new 4th Regiment were the Marine raiders, some of
the Corps' most colorful and battle-hardened units. From the
raiders the new 4th Marines inherited its famous regimental
motto: "Hold High the Torch." The 4th Marines battled
and fought through Emirau, Guam and Okinawa. After the surrender
of Japan, Admiral Nimitz requested a regimental combat team for
immediate occupation duty. General Shepherd was directed to
furnish the team, which would be the first foreign troops ever
to occupy Japan's own soil. There was a certain rightness to the
fact that the 4th Marines received the honor.

As soon as the occupation regiment secured their positions in
Japan, the new 4th Marines went out to claim their own. A few of
the old 4th were already liberated and they got themselves to
the 4th Marines area at the Yokosuka Naval Base. About 150
Marines of the old 4th were treated to a joyous reunion with the
new 4th Marines. The number was but a fraction of the nearly
1,500 captured, of whom only about 1,000 survived to return to
the States. The extreme hardships of life in the Japanese POW
camps caused around 250 deaths. An additional 175 men lost their
lives in the hellships unknowingly bombed or torpedoed by Allied
forces.

The former POWs were treated to a full banquet with a
military band and a particularly poignant moment to them was the
receiving of new Marine Corps emblems, their cherished
identification. The men of the Old 4th reviewed the New 4th as
it staged a formal guard mount in their honor.

" . . a bunch of Marines from the new 4th division,
came over and said, we want all of the old 4th Mariners out of
Shanghai. They rounded up 125 of us, took us over to Yokosuka,
and they had the Marine Corp band there. They had steaks. They
had chicken. They had every kind of food you could think of.
We could have anything we want and could request any music.
Well, the music we knew was way back in the '40s. They didn't
even know them. But the climax was that they threw a full
battle dress parade for us. That's something that you don't
get until you serve 30 years in the Marine Corp and we got a
full battle dress parade. We had the commanding general there
with us and Clement's, who was the one who organized the new
4th. And the irony of that was that when they organized the
new 4th division, they took the flag and the standard which is
a Marine Corp flag and kept them covered and encased. They
made a vow that they would not uncase those colors until they
came to Japan and liberated all of the 4th mariners and throw
a big parade for us, and that was what they did. They unfurled
those colors and I think that you could hear the uproar back
in the States, you know. And they went through that parade for
us and everything. Well, you cried really. Just no way that
you could hold it back, you know. "
- Pete George

Just days after the war, reports of war crimes come pouring
in by the thousands. Wherever Japan invaded, atrocities followed
and not just against Allied prisoners. Men, women and children
were beaten, shot, tortured and slaughtered. China by far
suffered the most, Japan is to blame for over 10 million Chinese
lives. A United Nations Report in 1947 estimated that 9 million
Chinese were killed in the war, and "an enormous
number" died of starvation and disease in 1945 and 1946 in
the prolonged famine that occurred as a result of Japan's final
devastating offensive in China. Japan's last, vicious assault
swept through the rice-producing regions of China.

Indonesia suffered greatly as well, around 130,000 Europeans
were interned and 30,000 perished, including 4,500 European
women and 2,300 children. Between 300,000 and 1 million
Indonesians were mobilized as slave labor, with many being sent
outside the country to work on the Burma-Siam "railroad of
death". After the war, the United Nations accepted a figure
of 300,000 deaths among Indonesian slave labor during the
Japanese occupation.

The International Military Tribunal of the Far East, IMTFE,
was established in Tokyo. The Allies defined three classes of
war crimes and criminals. Class A referred to the policymakers
who conspired to wage war. Class B and Class C referred to the
men who ordered atrocities, allowed them to happen, or actually
committed them. Class A war criminals were convicted, sentenced
and executed in Sugamo Prison.

Twenty five Class A criminals were convicted and sentenced, 7
of them to death, 16 to life. Five thousand seven hundred-plus
Class B and C criminals were brought to trial, about 3,000 were
convicted and sentenced, 920 were executed.

In peacetime, General MacArthur once again let down the men
of Bataan and Corregidor. At Macarthur's insistence, the emperor
was not held accountable for the actions of his island nation.
During Imperial Japan's reign of terror, every facet of the war
was committed in the name of the emperor. The general consensus
of the Japanese was that as a nation they were not to blame for
the slaughter committed during the war, only the militarists in
the government were at fault. These post war feelings carry over
to this very day, as many Japanese do not fault themselves and
some even believe that their aggressive behavior was committed
out of self defense and preservation of Asia as a whole.

MacArthur also cut a deal with the devil himself, the
Japanese medical Unit 731 was never held accountable for the
unspeakable horrors committed upon men and women as human guinea
pigs. In a top secret research facility called Unit 731,
Japanese doctor Shiro Ishii and his staff conducted diabolical
weapons research that claimed the lives of untold
thousands--perhaps even hundreds of thousands--of Chinese
civilians. Unlike his equals in the Nazi death camps, his deeds
were not exposed and no one was ever punished for the atrocities
committed at Unit 731 and other similar camps, because the
documents recording their grim findings were secretly sold to
the United States in exchange for amnesty. Japan's Unit 731 were
years ahead in the development of biology and germ warfare, and
with the Cold War beginning as soon as WWII ended, MacArthur
forgave these murderous doctors and scientists as long as the
turned over their research data to American scientists.

The peace treaty of 1951, guided by MacArthur himself, was
deliberately worded to tie off the issue of Japanese liability.
During the war, POWs heard wild stories about compensation for
their suffering: free homes, free cars and lifetime supplies of
this and that when actually all they received was their military
back pay. Japan was truly destroyed economically after the war
but the years since the war has seen Japan rise to one of the
world's strongest economies. Japan to this day hides behind the
peace treaty as an excuse not to pay reparations to the men and
women who suffered so badly.

As the POWs grew older and the effects of malnourishment,
physical beatings, and emotional pain began to take their toll,
a new fight laid ahead. EX-POWs had to fight the bureaucracy of
the United States Veterans Administration for benefits and
pension purposes. The VA was unresponsive, skeptical, and not
ready to take a man's word about the beating he took that ruined
his back or when a man had to survive 3 1/2 years on a vitamin
deficient diet. To this day EX-POWs have to explain their ordeal
to twenty and thirty year old VA doctors, many of whom have
never heard of Corregidor, the hellships or Japanese slave labor
camps.

All EX-POWs have one common goal to pass along to future
generations, REMEMBER THEM. Remember the
men who died in battle, remember the men who marched days upon
days with no food or water, remember the men who were beaten
when they worked and killed when they did not. Remember the men
who had to wait to die in the Zero Ward, remember the men who
lost their lives at sea after their hellship was sunk, and
remember the men who survived their 3 1/2 year ordeal.

All prisoners of the Japanese will tell you, we can forgive
but we can't forget. _^_